Hospital reaches settlement over bathroom death

Feb. 15, 2014
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Beebe Healthcare in Lewes recently settled a lawsuit with the relatives of a 14-year-old girl who died after becoming unable to breathe while she was in a locked hospital
bathroom. / The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

by James Fisher, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

by James Fisher, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

WILMINGTON, Del. -- A hospital and the relatives of a 14-year-old girl who died after becoming unable to breathe while she was in a locked bathroom there have settled out of court to resolve a lawsuit brought by the girl's family.

The family of Christina Atkins, who was a ninth-grader from Milton when she died in May 2011, agreed to a resolution that included monetary compensation, said their attorney, James P. Hall. The Atkinses, he said, are also pressing Delaware lawmakers to pass a bill ensuring all hospitals give their staffs quick access to keys that unlock bathroom doors.

"The parents and siblings miss Christina a great deal," Hall said, "but they're trying to take this loss and build from it and keep her spirit alive. Her death might ultimately save lives around the country."

Superior Court records show the Atkinses and Beebe Healthcare told a judge in mid-January that a "resolution has been reached" allowing the lawsuit to be dismissed.

In the original complaint, filed in September 2012, the family said Christina's mother, Bonnie Atkins, took her to the emergency room at what was then called Beebe Medical Center in Lewes on May 26, 2011. The teenager had recently been treated for a urinary tract infection and was feeling "extreme discomfort and distress," the lawsuit said.

A nurse in the ER asked Christina to provide a urine sample, pointing her to the restroom. In the locked bathroom, Christina "began to experience respiratory difficulty, which was heard by Christina's mother ... and to nursing and medical personnel in the emergency room department who were all outside the restroom door," the lawsuit said.

"I could hear the sounds of my daughter gasping for air," Bonnie Atkins said in testimony in the state House of Representatives last summer in support of a bill that would require hospitals to ensure staff have "ready access to a locked hospital bathroom" in an emergency.

"I watched staff stick pens, paper clips and pins in an effort to unlock that door. ... It would be more than 10 minutes later that security was finally able to locate a key to free my daughter. I never again heard her speak."

After a security staffer with a key finally opened the door and ER workers rushed in, Christina was "not responsive," the lawsuit says. She was flown to Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, where she died two days later.

The family's blog and memorial websites honoring Christina indicate she was likely suffering from toxic shock syndrome, caused by a bacterial blood infection, before she went to the ER.

The hospital's November 2012 response to the lawsuit admitted no master key was found at the ER's head nursing station, but denied that its nurses and maintenance workers "did not know where the master key was located within the hospital." The stipulation between the Atkinses and Beebe found in court records dismissing the suit does not contain any admission of fault on Beebe Healthcare's part.

In a statement Tuesday, Beebe's vice president of quality, safety and risk management, Marcy Jack, said the plaintiffs and Beebe "have amicably resolved the case to everyone's mutual satisfaction."

The hospital, Jack said, "began putting changes into place as soon as the event occurred ensuring access to locked bathrooms," and said all staff are told "to be alert to the smallest signal of a threat to safety and follow up and report the condition before it reaches a patient or visitor or employee."